Lower Counties on the Delaware
1664–1776
Flag
Delaware in 1757
Status	Colony ofEngland (1664–1707) Colony ofGreat Britain (1707–1776)
Capital	New Castle
Common languages	English,Dutch,Munsee,Unami
Government	Semiautonomousproprietary colony
Proprietor
• 1664–1682	Territory contested
• 1682–1718	William Penn (first)
• 1775–1776	John Penn (last)
Legislature	General Assembly
History
• Established	1664
• Independence	1776
Currency	Delaware pound
Preceded by Succeeded by New Netherland State of Delaware
Today part of	United States

TheLower Counties on the Delaware, was a semi-autonomous region of theproprietaryProvince of Pennsylvania and ade factoBritish colony inNorth America.^[1] Although notroyally sanctioned, Delaware consisted of the three counties on the west bank of theDelaware River Bay.

In the early 17th century, the area was inhabited byLenape and possiblyAssateague Indian tribes. The first European settlers wereSwedes, who established the colony ofNew Sweden at Fort Christina in present-dayWilmington, Delaware, in 1638. TheDutch captured the colony in 1655 and annexed it to New Netherland to the north.England subsequently took control of it from the Dutch in 1664. In 1682,William Penn, theQuaker proprietor of theProvince of Pennsylvania to the north leased the three lower counties on theDelaware River fromJames, the Duke of York, who went on to become King James II.

The three lower counties on theDelaware River were governed as part of the Province of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1701, when the lower counties petitioned for and were granted an independent colonial legislature; the two colonies shared the same governor until 1776. The English colonists who settled in Delaware were mainly Quakers. In the first half of the 18th century, New Castle andPhiladelphia became the primary ports of entry to the new world for a quarter of a millionProtestant immigrants fromUlster, referred to as Scotch-Irish in America and Ulster Scots inIreland. Delaware had no established religion at this time.

TheAmerican Revolutionary War began in April 1775, and on June 15, 1776, the Delaware Assembly voted to break all ties with Great Britain, creating the independentState of Delaware.^[1] On July 4, 1776, Delaware joined 12 other British colonies to form theUnited States of America.

From the earlyDutch settlement in 1631 to the colony's rule by Pennsylvania in 1682, the land that later became the U.S. state of Delaware changed hands many times. Because of this, Delaware became a heterogeneous society made up of individuals who were diverse in country of origin and religion.^{[citation needed]}

The first European exploration of what would become known as theDelaware Valley was made by the Dutch shipHalve Maen under the command ofHenry Hudson in 1609. He was searching for what was believed to be aNorthwest Passage to Asia. Hudson sailed into what now is theDelaware Bay. He named it the South River, but this would later change afterSamuel Argall came across the mouth of the river in 1610, after being blown off course. Argall later renamed this waterway as theriver Delaware, afterThomas West, Lord De La Warr, the second governor of Virginia.^[5]

Follow-up expeditions byCornelius May in 1613 andCornelius Hendrickson in 1614 mapped the shoreline of what would become the colony and state of Delaware for inclusion in theNew Netherland colony. Initial Dutch settlement was centered up the Delaware River atFort Nassau atBig Timber Creek, south of what is nowGloucester City, New Jersey.

Neither the Dutch nor the English showed any early interest in establishing settlement on this land. It was not until 1629 that agents of theDutch West India Company,Gillis Hossitt andJacob Jansz, arrived to negotiate with the Native Americans to purchase land for a colony. (The Dutch always purchased land from the Native Americans, rather than take it by force, but the peoples had differing concepts of property and use. The Native Americans often considered the Dutch "payments" to be gifts in keeping with their Native custom, and expected to share use of the common land.) Hossitt and Jansz secured a treaty granting the Dutch a parcel of land running along the shore eight Dutch miles long and half a Dutch mile deep (roughly 29 by just under 2 US miles). This nearly coincided with the length of the coast of modern Sussex and Kent counties in Delaware.

In 1631 the Dutch sent a group of twenty-eight men to build a fort inside Cape Henlopen on Lewes Creek to establish theZwaanendael Colony.^[6] This first colony was intended to take advantage of the large whale population in the bay and to produce whale oil. A cultural misunderstanding with the Native Americans resulted in their killing of these 28 colonists before a year had passed.^[6]PatroonDavid Pietersz. de Vries arrived shortly thereafter with an additional 50 settlers. Although he concluded a treaty with the Indians, de Vries, his partners in Holland, and theDutch West India Company decided the location was too dangerous for immediate colonization. They took the additional settlers toNew Amsterdam (New York) instead.

In March 1638, the Swedish colony ofNew Sweden was established as the first permanent European settlement in Delaware. TheKalmar Nyckel anchored at a rocky point on the Minquas Kill.^[7] Today this site is calledSwedes' Landing; it is located inWilmington, Delaware.^[6] The expedition was led, and had been instigated byPeter Minuit, the founding governor ofNew Netherland. He had been dismissed by the Dutch West India Company, which operated the colony as a concession. Minuit resented the company and was well aware that the Dutch had little settlement in theZuyd (Delaware) river valley. New Sweden was a multicultural affair, with Finns, Dutch, Walloons (Belgians), and Germans, in addition to Swedes among the settlers.

The first outpost of the Swedish settlement was namedFort Christina (now Wilmington) afterQueen Christina of Sweden. The Swedes introduced log cabin construction to the New World and the humble house form was later spread to the American backcountry by Scotch-Irish immigrants who entered the colony through the port of New Castle. Swedish colonial GovernorJohan Björnsson Printz administered the colony of New Sweden from 1643 to 1653. He was succeeded byJohan Classon Risingh, the last governor of New Sweden.^[5] The Dutch had never accepted the Swedish colony as legitimate, and the Dutch West India Company competed with the officials and backers of New Sweden. In 1651, New Netherland GovernorPeter Stuyvesant had Fort Nassau dismantled and reassembled downriver of Fort Christina asFort Casimir. This meant that the Dutch effectively encircled the Swedish colony. The Swedes abandonedFort Beversreede, a short-lived attempt to establish a foothold at the end of theGreat Minquas Path (in modern Philadelphia).

Three years later, the New Sweden colony attacked and seized Fort Casimir, renaming it Fort Trinity. The struggle finally came to an end in September 1655. With theSecond Great Northern War raging in Europe, Stuyvesant assembled an army and naval squadron sufficient to capture the Swedish forts, thus re-establishing control of the colony. The Dutch renamed Fort Casimir/Trinity asNew Amstel (later translated toNew Castle). It became their center for fur trading with Native Americans and the colony's administration headquarters.^[5] The area's European population grew rapidly.

In 1664, after English ColonelRichard Nicolls capturedNew Amsterdam, Robert Carr was sent to theDelaware River settlements. He took over New Amstel, pillaging it and mistreating its settlers, some of whom he sold into slavery in Virginia.^[8][9] Carr translated the name of the post from Dutch into English and it has been known since asNew Castle.^[6] Carr and his troops continued down the shore, ravaging and burning settlements, including a Mennonite utopian community led byPieter Corneliszoon Plockhoy near present-dayLewes, Delaware. This effectively ended the Dutch rule of the colony and, for that matter, ended their claims to any land in colonial North America. The English took over New Netherland, renaming it New York. Delaware was thenceforth claimed by New York under a Deputy of theDuke of York from 1664 to 1682, but neither the Duke nor his colonists controlled it. The proprietors of Maryland took action to take advantage of this situation.^[6]

The area now known as Delaware was owned by William Penn, the Quaker owner of Pennsylvania. In contemporary documents from the earlyRevolutionary period, the area is generally referred to as "The Three Lower Counties on the Delaware River" (Lower Counties on Delaware) or by the names ofthe three counties.^[10]

After William Penn was granted theprovince of Pennsylvania byKing Charles II in 1681, he asked for and later received the lands of Delaware from the Duke of York.^[5][11] Penn had a very hard time governing Delaware because the economy and geology resembled those of the Chesapeake Bay colonies more than that of Pennsylvania. The lowland areas were developed for tobacco plantations and dependent on enslaved Africans and African Americans for labor. Penn attempted to merge the governments of Pennsylvania and the lower counties of Delaware. Representatives from each area clashed strongly and, in 1701 Penn agreed to allow two assemblies to be elected and conduct their separate affairs. Delawareans would meet in New Castle, and Pennsylvanians would gather in Philadelphia.^[6] Delaware, like Philadelphia and more so than Maryland, continued to be a melting pot of sorts. It was home to Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and French, in addition to the English, who constituted the dominant culture.

• Johnson, Amandus.The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware, 1638–1664 (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1911)
• Weslager, C. A.A Man and His Ship: Peter Minuit and the Kalmar Nyckel ( Kalmar Nyckel Foundation. Wilmington, Delaware. 1989)

39°44′17″N75°33′29″W / 39.738°N 75.558°W /39.738; -75.558

• Delaware Colony
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